[Pat Major]

[COLOR=DarkOrange][i]You would need 8 refs just to signal in or out. That's a lot of refs, and they aren't watching the overall match. The only issue I would see is that a ref's attention can be pulled away for a potentially "long" amount of time if he has to stare at your robot waiting for it to get "in" the loading zone properly. Even if that ref is assigned to watch that robot, I still think it could be an issue with watching other overall activities. And I personally wouldn't expect a ref to be my "in/out" identifier throughout an entire match. It compromises his safety if he's not watching what else is going on, and then the team gets frustrated with the ref because he's not signaling immediately if the robot is "in".

It's not the ref's responsibility to direct you "into" the loading zone, it's the team's responsibility. Though, it would take away the penalties for "retrieving a tetra while not in the zone" (not that I'm opposed to that!). But while it is the team's responsibility to follow the rules, this particular rule should be defined differently so that it will be clear to ALL people when you are in/out of the zone.[/color]

Four referees woud do. We do not need them at the human players side because of the human players mats.

A referee under the current system has to watch to see if the robot is in the loading station, he would be watching the same thing. The diffrence is that instead of throwing a red flag if the robot is not "in" he would throw up his hand when the robot is "in".

The referees would not be directing anyone, they would just be letting all teams know if a robot is in or out, which might also lessen the number of flags thrown for a team that gets into a pushing match with another robot thinking they were not quite in the zone...when indeed they were.

My guess is, we will all end up wearing skirts.